so here's a random question that i'm almost embarrassed to ask. i discovered today that at least one of my pullets has been snacking on paint chips... several years ago i painted my house, and decided at the last minute to throw a coat on my back stairs as well while i had the paint sprayer. didn't use any primer on the stairs, and just half assed it in general. i've regretted it ever since, as the paint lasted all of about 6 months before it started peeling off (just talking about those stairs to be clear).
i live in the suburbs, and have just an average sized suburban yard. my coop isn't huge, probably not much bigger than the "cutesy" coops that are the bane of the OT's existance
. however i only have 4 pullets total, have a separate pen that we keep attached to the coop to add to their run area (it's a raised coop so they have all the area under the coop as well), and i let them out to forage the entirety of the back yard almost every evening for at least an hour or 2 before they coop up for the night.
so anyway, one of their spots they usually stop at on their nightly sweeps of the back yard is under those stairs, where there's quite a bit of vegetation grown up since i can't get the mower under there typically. well apparently at least one (though logic tells me probably all of them do to some degree) of the girls has been pecking around on the stairs themselves, pecking off flecks of paint (latex based, if i remember correctly). should i be concerned about this? i mean obviously i'm sure it's not boosting their health, but is it a huge risk for them? could it transfer anything harmful to their eggs? they haven't started laying yet, but they're combs and waddles have been in hyper-drive the last few weeks so i'm assuming they'll start very soon. they're all around 20 weeks old. again, they're by no means eating paint all day. they only have free run of the back yard for a couple hours per day, and they don't necessarily spend a huge chunk of that time focusing on the stairs. it's just one of several of their normal areas they hit up. i'm kinda at a loss as to what my options could be...i could power wash the rest of the paint off (which really i should have done years ago), but now i think all it'd do is just litter the ground with chips, creating a huge smorgasbord for the chickens. there'd be no way to do it cleanly. i don't know...thoughts/comments? feel free to infer that i'm a dummy for not having the foresight to see this problem before i got the girls, as i'm already marinating in that thought
.
